What you have given was an example of an improperly padded struct and said "hey it still works in this odd case". And in doing so you've glazed over any other use. Maybe that's your only use for it, or maybe your understanding of how compilers work is not so great. In either case, what you're proposing is ridiculous. Hidden features that only work if you know the hotkey reminds me of something you'd code in High School, and it doesn't belong in a production product.

64-bit compilers still prefer 32-bit integers and align those on a 32-bit alignment.

But I agree with brainiac, the default stepsize should be the pointersize alignment. The overrides should be 4 and 1
Usually the arrows are used for pointers to quickly see if the pointer you found can be used for other things.
But the the final offset is different though, as that will point to a structure of elements instead of pointers. (Although I guess the final offset could be on a 32-bit stepsize, but that would be inconsistent with the rest)

What if structure3 is packed and it is a mix of elements and pointers. Using arrows with stepsize 8 to see if there are other pointers, we can miss some of them. We can miss much more with stepsize 8 compared to stepsize 4.

So you've given again, a specific example, which is a packed struct. Notice you had to put #pragma pack ( 1 ) before that code. And why? Because it's not default behavior.

What if it's not a struct. What if it's say, an array of player pointers? Your whole argument goes out the window if it's anything other than a struct. And it has to be a special kind of struct for you to be right.

dude you keep going back to structs. I told you 3 times already. There's many other uses where this is absolutely needed and it's not just for structs.

Here's a challenge: Find me a pointer table on x64 that is 32 bit aligned and not 64 bit aligned, and I will take back everything i said. And you're allowed to pack it or do #pragma(whatever) you want.

"Pointer size on 64 bit is 8 bytes!" - of course it is. I know about it.

If you still don't get it, DarkByte already fixed your issue. Recent SVN version already use step "8" for all nodes except last, when target is 64bit. I will use overrides when I need them. You don't have to.

If you want to try it, install CE6.5 Beta3, and overwrite files from "update 15.12.07.7z"